


Nor Are We Forgiven

by lokery



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Galra!Keith, Keith/Lance endgame, M/M, More tags to be added, Pidge/Shiro endgame, Self-Discovery, Semi-Canon Compliant, Sendak pretends he's not a dad but he's a dad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-22 22:58:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7457125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokery/pseuds/lokery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nineteen years ago, Emperor Zarkon's most trusted general fell in love with a human woman. When the general and his lover were killed, Zarkon took in their infant son Kyryx and placed him with eager young soldier Sendak to be raised and trained in the ways of the Galran Empire. </p><p>Now, Ky has helped Sendak capture one of the Voltron lions. But their celebratory return to Zarkon's flotilla is shadowed by Ky's discovery of a transmission that threatens the end of Earth. He knows he's supposed to reject his human blood—and might have been able to, if not for a chance meeting with Zarkon's human gladiatorial champion. Torn between remaining loyal to Sendak and seeking the truth about his own past and future, Ky throws himself in the path of the new Voltron paladins . . . for better or worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some vocabulary—datapad, etc—is taken from _Star Trek_ , as well as the idea of "Standard" as a language. Bless you, Roddenberry. Title and opening quote both by Richard Siken. There is a semi-OC in this—he's a character from the show, but only has like five lines and yet managed to utterly charm me.
> 
> See end notes for a brief glossary (and pronunciation guide!) of Galran names and terms.
> 
> I expect to update this fic once per week, probably on Mondays or Tuesdays. This is gonna be a long one, folks. **Edit: I have gotten bogged down in some IRL job stuff (sigh), and so updates may be slow for a bit, but I'm still here!**

> _ "Eventually something you love is going to be taken away."  
>  _ —Richard Siken
> 
>  

Tonight, victory was upon them.

Kyryx twisted in his cockpit to glance back again at the red lion drifting along behind the flock of skimmer-ships towing it. The thing was enormous and shimmering like a contained nebula. Bigger than Ky had expected, even knowing it was part of Voltron—who, Ky heard, was easily a quarter the size of Zarkon’s enormous battle-cruiser. 

The lion’s black eyes were dead and haunting, but its lacquered ruby plating gleamed, and its recovery guaranteed tonight’s brief shore leave on Resha would be a happy one for all of the  _ Nyr _ ’s crew.

Ky stared at the lion’s eyes until he felt a sharp tug in his guts, then focused again on drawing in to the  _ Nyr _ ’s sleek flank, where light spilled from the open hangar door. The skimmers entered by docking number, and Ky had been flying with this crew long enough to fall into place without thinking about it. He did look over at the skimmer next to his, though, just to see Brezyn give him a goofy thumbs-up.

A twist of his fingers turned his sensory array from cruising to landing, and he maneuvered into his docking slot as he keyed in the code to bring the padded bracers up from the floor. The skimmer shuddered as they aligned with it and magnetized it in place.

Ky tugged off his helmet and shook the sweat out of his hair. This was one of many things that sucked about being a low-level pilot: he was among the first to fly in and dock postmission, but that meant he had to wait for all the midlevel and senior pilots to pull into place before he could disembark.

His commlink chirped in his ear, his skimmer viewscreen popping up with Accept/Decline Private Call buttons and a little still-frame shot of Sendak scowling. Grinning, he hit Accept. “Are you calling with your congratulations?”

“Congratulations,” Sendak said dryly. “You didn’t run into anything. This time.”

“Or last time!”

“I suppose. I want you in quarters before we dock. We need to talk.”

Ky narrowed his eyes at Sendak’s still-frame. He couldn’t tell if that was a “you’re in trouble and I’m going to make you scrub the galley floor for a month” voice, or if his vrenen wanted to discuss something more benign. 

Either way, better play it safe, for now. “Understood.”

“I mean it, Kyryx. Cooldown, and then come here.”

“I  _ said _ understood.”

Sendak snarled over the line and disconnected.

Ky sighed and tugged his commlink out of his ear. Sendak had been on edge for weeks now, ever since Zarkon pinged with the message that a successful retrieval of the red lion meant the  _ Nyr  _ would rejoin the flotilla built around Zarkon’s battle-cruiser. For the past eighteen months, the  _ Nyr  _ had operated almost independently, with Sendak in charge of splitting their time between searching for the lions, scouting for new, resource-laden planets, and . . . well, generally doing whatever the hell he wanted.

Sendak could talk obedience and respect for rank as much as he wanted, but Ky knew that secretly, he liked a long leash much more than being directly under Emperor Zarkon’s thumb. When they rejoined the flotilla, his promotion to commander wouldn’t be much more than a set of stripes on his active-duty plating.

A low  _ boom _ sounded from the front of the hangar, and Ky sucked in his breath, bracing for the return of gravity. It slammed into him, making his head swim and his already unhappy stomach threaten to redecorate the inside of his skimmer. 

Yeah, that was the  _ last  _ thing he needed. He wasn’t the most social on shore leaves, but he didn’t want to be stuck here all night scrubbing out his ship while everyone else ate and danced and drank.

He dematerialized his skimmer’s viewscreen and clambered out onto the nose to make his way to the platform that had risen with the bracers to meet the ship. Brezyn was already on his platform, stripping out of his heavier pilot’s plating to reveal the more form-fitting casual plating underneath.

Ky left his pilot’s plating on, only pausing on the platform to press his thumb to the console’s lockpad. He still felt like he was going to throw up.

_ Skimmer 909-8301 locked to pilot ID 3255651. _

He swiped his thumb over that number. 3255651. He’d fought for so long to get it, and lately it didn’t feel like enough. Years of training, starting practically from birth thanks to Sendak’s belief that relying on anyone else for protection was stupidity deserving of death. A full course in the training school on Zarkon’s ship, learning everything from their ancient culture to healing practices to piloting. Ky had graduated first pilot in his class, of course, and had graduated two full years early.

But here he was, still one of the lowest-ranked skimmer pilots, when he ought to be at Sendak’s right hand, piloting the  _ Nyr  _ for him. He ought to have been there all these eighteen months instead of whiling away kicking ass on the training floor and running scouting missions on dead-zone Class-1 planets.

_ You just can’t be satisfied with anything, can you? _

Not even recovering the red lion. Not even flying in one of the Emperor’s garrisons. He was supposed to feel honored to be a Galra soldier at all, much less a pilot  _ and _ the zxen of one of Zarkon’s top commanders.

“Kyryx!” Brezyn waved from the floor, his datapad in hand. “You asleep up there or what?”

_ Say something normal _ . “Dreaming about all the booze I’m going to drink tonight.” Ky disconnected his own datapad from the console, then swung onto the platform’s ladder to slide down to the floor. 

“Oh man, I know. I can see it now: me and about eight bottles of that Resha special stuff. You know, the green stuff?”

“Make it five. If you get so drunk I have to carry you back to the ship, I’ll just leave you in the bar.”

“You wound me.” Brezyn tapped away on his pad, face screwing up as something flashed red. “Ugh, hold on.” He wandered under the belly of his ship.

Ky rolled his eyes and started going through his own postmission cooldown checklist. He hadn’t been anywhere near the real action—of course—and had instead been stuck with guard duty to make sure the locals didn’t get too close to the extraction site. All his skimmer needed was a quick systems update and he was done. He stowed his datapad and jogged over to Brezyn’s skimmer. “Heading back to quarters before we dock.”

Brezyn grunted, hand buried inside an open panel. “Give me a hand first? I can’t find out where these sparks are coming from.” He stepped back and half knelt, cupping his hands on one knee. “Give you a boost?”

Ky shot him a venomous glare, but he took the offer anyway, planting a foot on Brezyn’s hands so he could peer into the panel. His two years in the academy had gotten him used to pretty much any human-related insult the other Galra soldiers could come up with, yeah, but a “hey, you’re human” reminder from the person who probably counted as his best friend still made him feel weird. Not stung, exactly, just . . . odd. Within sight.

“Okay so I can definitely count on you as my wingman, right?”

“Huh?” Ky shook himself and squinted into the darkness. “Why haven’t they installed interior lights in these yet?” He gave up and shoved his whole arm in, spreading his fingers wide and feeling for sparks.

“Lights? I don’t know. Are you going to wingman me or not?”

“I thought you had a boyfriend?”

“Nah, he’s old news,” Brezyn said in a voice that said the guy was very much not old news, just sore news. 

Yet another reason Ky avoided relationships. Brezyn was always falling into and out of them, picking up people on every shore leave and temporary assignment, then getting his heart broken when they decided he wasn’t around often enough for them to care how good the sex was.

Because Brezyn had assured him, many times, that the quality of the sex was not the problem.

Sparks snapped over Ky’s pointer finger.  _ There. _ He groped around and found a severed wire. Age had killed it, he guessed, or it had come loose from the bundle holding it together. “Pass me some wrap.”

“Uh, you’re standing on my hands.”

Ky grabbed ahold of the open plate and hauled himself up, bearing his own weight. “Showoff,” Brezyn muttered. A second later, his hand cupped the bottom of Ky’s foot. “Step back down.” Once Ky was standing again, Brezyn handed up the wrap. A couple of quick loops around the wire, and Ky was on the ground. 

Brezyn grinned. “You’re my hero.”

“I thought I was a showoff?”

“Yeah, all the best heroes are.” Brezyn tossed the wrap and his repair belt in the vague direction of his repair station. Ignoring Ky’s dirty look, he twisted his wristlink and checked the time. “We should—Wait, did you say something about quarters?” He paled and screwed up his face. “Is it, uh, Sendak? He want to talk?”

“Y . . . eah? Why?”

Brezyn shook his head, looking suddenly queasy. “No reason. I mean, you know, don’t get me wrong, I like the guy just fine, he’s my commander and all, he’s got my respect, but have you ever, like . . . talked to him about cutting you a break sometime? Not being so tough on you?”

Ky did  _ not _ have the mind for this discussion right now, especially not with Brezyn’s paranoid babbling giving him a headache. He felt like he’d left his brain behind in that planet’s atmosphere, dipping in and out of its deep-purple clouds, piloting free of regulations and ranks and reality. “We’re soldiers of the Galra Empire, Brezyn,” he said, and broke into a jog. “We’re the toughest people in the universe.”

 

# # #

 

The commander’s quarters were located just behind the bridge, protected by a ten-foot-thick wall of blended steel and crystal plating. Originally Ky had been assigned his own quarters with the rest of the crew, but he and Sendak had always lived together, and anyway, Sendak’s quarters were big enough to house a private training floor and a flight simulator, so when they were living apart, Ky ended up spending most of his time there, and fell asleep more often than not in the simulator.

Him living here sparked rumors of favoritism, he knew—which was why it was vital that Brezyn and everyone else think Sendak was unusually hard on him.

Cool air rushed out the open door. Out of habit, he called, “Temperature up two degrees,” and reached for the reknya he kept hanging just inside the door. He threw it around his shoulders, then kicked off his boots and padded down the entrance hall, the feet of his black silksuit silencing his steps. “Sendak?”

“Here.” Sendak was at his private terminal, already wearing his top-gloss shore leave plating with his commander’s stripes and his awards on display on his chest. He didn’t bother to hide the terminal screen when Ky entered his office. His private messaging program was up, and he was henpecking a message in ancient Galran, a written language Ky, like most of the younger Galra, couldn’t read. The remnants of the language lingered in their conversations—vrepit sa for one, and and words like vrenen and zxen, loaded words they didn’t have a new Galran term for. Sentiments that couldn’t be expressed in the Standard language.

Didn’t stop Ky burning with curiosity, though. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Sendak send a private message. “Who’re you writing?”

Sendak spun his chair slowly around and fixed Ky with a look. “Do you honestly think I’m going to answer that?”

“Worth a shot?”

“Shot taken. Deflected with shields at one hundred percent.” Sendak rose. He stood half a foot taller than Brezyn, putting him two feet taller than Ky. Ky’s genes might have given him the Galra golden eyes, fangs, and brute strength, but they had totally failed him by splicing humanity into everything else: his skin, his height, even his thick, dark hair. “I monitored your flight feed today.”

Ky bristled. He’d assumed Sendak was just giving him shit over the commlink, their standard vrenen/zxen jibing, but apparently not. “And?”

Sendak settled on his heels and took a long look at Ky. “You flew well today. And you’ve flown more simulated missions than any other pilot in this garrison.”

“I know.”

“You’ve crashed more, too.”

Stiffer: “I know.”

Ears flicking forward, Sendak said, “Then you know why I can’t promote you to pilot of the  _ Nyr _ .”

Ky blinked. “I didn’t ask to be pilot of the  _ Nyr _ .”

Sendak’s semigood humor vanished. “Don’t lie to me, Kyryx.”

“I’m not lying—I didn’t—”

Sendak tapped his claws on his wristlink and brought up a holo of a rank adjustment application.

NAME AND ID: KYRYX/3255651

POSITION: LEAD PILOT, NYR (CM. SENDAK)

Ky grabbed Sendak’s wrist and angled it so he could see better. “I did  _ not _ send this in.”

“Then who did?”

Brezyn’s nauseated expression flashed in his mind. “Shit,” Ky muttered, dropping Sendak’s wrist. Why hadn’t he realized it was odd for Brezyn to assume a stop in his quarters meant Sendak wanted to talk to him? “It was . . . a friend. An idiot friend.”

“Brezyn, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Ky mumbled. He rubbed a hand down his face. “Look, don’t—um, please, vrenen, don’t assign him anything. I’ll take the punishment for it.”

“Bear in mind when I say this that I can in fact do anything I want,” Sendak said, “but I cannot punish you for applying for a position.” He closed the holo and crossed his arms. “I do find it curious that you apparently discuss your dissatisfaction with your rank often enough to warrant this brave little intervention.”

Ky winced. Gods, his head ached. He didn’t  _ complain  _ about his rank . . . did he? Sure, he’d talked to Brezyn occasionally—and while very drunk—about wishing he could fly the  _ Nyr _ , but it hadn’t been anything as petulant as a complaint, just . . . a verbal note. A pin in the thought. Like when he and the other trainees chose the specifications of their tracks.  _ One day, I’d like to . . . _

“Kyryx . . .” Sendak sighed hard. “You flew well today.” His pause and the way he shifted his tense shoulders made Ky’s focus sharpen. He became aware at once that this was going to be a fight. “But until you learn that being reckless as a pilot endangers the Galra Empire, I can’t promote you.”

“What— _ ever _ ?” Screw worrying about complaining. This subject had stayed tacit for so long that Ky had let himself have hope. And now he finally asked for it—sort of—only to have any hope of a grunt work-less future taken away? 

“So I’m going to be stuck flying escort and Class-1 scouting missions for the rest of my life? That’s not fair! I train harder than anyone—than  _ any _ of them. Every day, every spare second I have, I’m on the training floor or in the simbot.”

“And every time you’re in the simulator, you make mistakes that, on a real mission, would threaten your life and the lives of everyone around you. Serving Zarkon is not about individual glory, Kyryx. It’s about—”

“Oh, spare me.” Ky tugged his reknya tighter and brushed past Sendak, heading for his room. 

Sendak’s low growl made Ky’s bones chill. “Sysadmin command: lock all doors until admin notice of release. Spare you  _ what _ ?”

The door locks flashed red. Ky clenched his hands and rounded on Sendak. If they were going to have this fight, he was going to give it his all. “Spare me your lecture about the few and the many and the glory and the wonder. I know you like being in command of your own ship as much as I want to be able to pilot it. You  _ like _ getting to do what you want, and aren’t you the one who tells me I should trust my judgment?”

“Not when your judgment is going to get you  _ killed _ .” Sendak loomed over him, cybernetic eye terribly bright. “My judgment has been honed through years of service, years of studying Zarkon’s methods and strategies.”

“Is that what you want me to do?” Ky asked, trying to pretend he didn’t sound pathetic. “You want me to read books?”

“I want you to accept your place until you have the commitment to earn a better one.”

Ky’s teeth clicked together. His fangs pricked his bottom lip. Drew blood. Galra fangs, human lips—not the best combination. He pressed his thumb to the wound. “Where the hell is this coming from? You . . . You used to tell me I was aiming below my abilities if I beat a training program six levels ahead of me. Now you want me to be content with being a-a-a  _ wingman _ ?”

“I said nothing about contentment.”

All sorts of treasonous thoughts whispered to him. Ky swallowed them away and sidestepped Sendak, ducking his head. It wasn’t surrender or submission, but he didn’t want to talk about this now—or ever. Every time he’d wanted to bring this up to Sendak himself, he’d had scrolls of arguments, entire speeches memorized, but the second they were alone together and he opened his mouth, all his carefully crafted justifications vanished like the wispy trails of afterburn.

Eventually, into the silence filled only with the heaviness of Sendak’s breathing, made labored and tinny by his cybernetic lung, Ky muttered, “Whatever. To the glory of the Empire, I guess.”

Sendak rumbled warningly. “Where is this coming from? You learned better. I taught you better myself. Your idiot friend’s interference aside, this tells me there is a larger problem here—something that, unlike this—” he shook his wrist, showing the holo of the application again “—is on your shoulders.”

“Me wanting to do my best is a larger problem?” Ky snapped, but his mouth was ahead of his brain and when he thought about what Sendak was saying, it made him wonder, too. Any other day he would’ve been able to laugh off what Brezyn had done. Just . . . not today. He was messed up in his head—had been since he was skimming guard back on the planet where the Alteans had hidden the red lion.

Sendak was apparently waiting for him to come to his own conclusion. It was a rare show of patience, so Ky took advantage of it. “I just . . . when we got the red lion, I thought . . .”

Now it seemed childish. He’d thought what? That being assigned the easiest position in a retrieval mission would prove he was good enough? That not taking risks—that not  _ crashing into anything _ , retroactively bitter over Sendak’s teasing—meant he was going to advance?

“I know I can do it,” he said, clenching his fists. The soft threads hanging from the edge of his reknya swung and brushed his wrists. “I know if I just had the chance . . .”

“You have to deserve the chance.” Sendak shifted closer. Not looming now. “When Zarkon assigned me to be your vrenen, I was barely out of the Academy. It took me your entire life to earn the right to have my own ship.”

There wasn’t malice or blame in his voice, but Ky could read it there if he wanted to. Who knew how many promotions Sendak had been denied because his zxen was a half-human runt. Very few knew who Ky was or why Zarkon had kept him rather than airlock him the moment he was born, and Sendak and Ky both preferred it stay that way, no matter how much trouble it brought. The truth about him was hidden, and there were  _ still  _ enough accusations of favoritism over Ky living here rather than being sent to work on a supply ship.

Sendak put a hand on his shoulder, claws catching in his reknya. “Is piloting the  _ Nyr  _ really what you want? A station with me as your commander?”

“Of course it is.” Ky stared up at him, uneasy at the direction this was taking, at the unexpected hesitation in Sendak’s low voice. “Why wouldn’t I want to pilot for you?”

“Most zxen prefer a station away from their vrenen once they complete their training.” Sendak squeezed his shoulder. “Maybe once you settle and get over your wildling tendencies, you’ll feel differently.” He pulled away.

“Did you?” Ky asked. They’d crossed more boundaries than usual tonight, and the question had been burning in him for a long time. Moreso now that he’d seen Sendak send that message. What if it had been to  _ his _ vrenen? “Feel differently?”

Sendak’s face blanked. Now he looked more like the stern commander he was barking orders to his men rather than Ky’s caregiver and mentor. “I wouldn’t know. She died when I was young. Get dressed. We’re docking in less than half an hour. Sysadmin command: unlock doors.”

He left Ky in a hurry—or it seemed like a hurry to Ky. Sendak always moved with a certain speed. It was probably nothing. The quarters’ doors hissed closed behind him, and a moment later a shipwide announcement droned, “Commander on the bridge.”

Another tug in Ky’s guts, stronger, insistent. Ky doubled around it, around the sudden sucking feeling. He barely made it to the washroom to throw up in the toilet once, then twice. 

“Fuck.” He pressed his forehead to the cool underside of the sink. Fumbled for the medikit bolted to the wall and stuck himself with a panacea hypospray, and for good measure, one that cured nausea.

There was that disconnected feeling again. Except not his brain this time—his stomach. All the parts of him were being extracted, tractor-beamed from somewhere far off.

And for a second, lying there on the bathroom floor, he wanted to let the beam pick him apart and take him away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early update!

The crew descended onto Resha more or less together. Ky watched from the mouth of the  _ Nyr _ ’s belly as, laughing and chatting and talking about booze, they all herded down the ramp toward Resha’s capital city. His queasiness hadn’t gone away, and he was pretty sure he was going to turn around and head back in, maybe spend the night in the simbot, but then Brezyn tackled him from behind, shouting about club boys.

Only then he got a look at Ky’s expression and shied away. “Oh. So, uh . . .”

“Yes, I know it was you.” Ky shrugged. “Didn’t work out.”

Brezyn’s face fell. “Look, I’m sorry if, uh . . . I thought it would be—”

“It’s fine.” He sighed. He kind of couldn’t yell at Brezyn, since it was apparently his  _ whining _ , as Sendak put it, that gave Brezyn the idea in the first place. “It’s fine. You go ahead. I’ll meet you down there.”

Brezyn scrubbed a hand back over his bald head. He looked so different without his helmet, which, coupled with his ever-present goatee, framed his face. Absent it, he seemed more fragile or younger or something. Not like a fierce, fearless Galra, prize soldier of the whole universe. “Seriously, I’m really sorry if I got you in the shits with Sendak.”

“You didn’t. He turned me down, that’s it.”

“You promise? Chelna was telling me it was a dumb idea to start with.”

Ky scraped together a halfhearted impression of Sendak’s commander voice. “Just don’t do it again.”

“Y-yeah, bud, you got it. Sure.” Brezyn’s eyes snapped over Ky’s shoulder and he jerked like a stung ratbeast, straightening. “Good to see you, Chief Information Officer Plyrox, sir! Enjoy your shore leave!”

“Plytox,” Ky hissed, “ _ Plytox _ ,” but it was too late. Plytox passed them with a disgusted curl of his lip.

Brezyn buried his face in his hands. “I’m  _ never  _ going to get on his good side. How am I supposed to get a recommendation for Zarkon’s crew if our CIO hates me?”

“Try bribing him,” Ky suggested, just as Sendak appeared. “Uh, with hard work.”

“Hard work? Why bother when I can—” Brezyn spotted Sendak and snapped his mouth shut, then clumsily saluted, hands shaking. “Hi, uh, hi, Commander Sendak, sir. Good to see you.”

Sendak narrowed his eye. “Who are you again?”

Brezyn flushed and shuffled sideways. “So, yeah, bro, I’ll see you down there,” he muttered, and with a last salute to Sendak and a terrified look at Ky, he fled down the ramp to join the dregs of the  _ Nyr _ ’s crew.

Sendak slipped into place beside Ky. “Too much?”

“He deserved it.” The word felt heavy, loaded with all the talk of deserving and earning they’d left back in their quarters. In the shadow of the ship, Ky tugged his reknya tighter around his shoulders and let the side of his arm rest against Sendak’s elbow. “Are you drinking?”

“No. I have a meeting. Preparation for tomorrow’s docking.” Sendak broke from Ky’s lean, turned to block him in against the ship’s wall, and offered a softly glowing chip in the space between them. “This is for you.”

Ky turned it over in his fingers, his heart thumping hard. “A simulator chip?”

Sendak glanced around, his ears swiveling. Paranoid, as always, about their conversations being overheard. “It will unlock all the levels for the pilot training course and allow you to select when your performance is being monitored for your record.”

Ky’s eyebrows shot up, and he closed his fingers around the chip, pulling his arm into his reknya to hide it. This was huge. No one was allowed to skip training levels—you had to beat each level to your supervisor’s satisfaction, and then you could move on. And the monitoring system’s presence was always non-negotiable. “Why?”

“Get it out of your system,” Sendak said. “Best each level, feel like you’re the Empire’s top pilot. Take the risks you want to. Let yourself have it. Then do yourself a favor and  _ forget  _ that wanting. Forget it, and do the entire course again with only your service to your Emperor in mind.” He drew himself up tall. “This is the last thing I have to give you as your vrenen, Kyryx. Either use it and learn or remain where you are and stop whining about it.”

Under his reknya, Ky stuffed the chip into the breast pocket of his silksuit. “I—I don’t—I—thank you,” he forced out, embarrassed by his stuttering. Sendak never stuttered when he accepted his awards, and those were right from Zarkon’s hand. “Thank you.”

Sendak smiled. Actually smiled, a real, rare smile, showing the tips of his fangs. “It’s more for me than it is for you. As soon as you finish your training, I can have my quarters to myself again. After eighteen long, torturous years.”

“Yeah, I know exactly how torturous.” Ky itched to push Sendak, even tussle with him the way he would were they on their private training floor, but doing that here wouldn’t be a show of affection—it would be a threat to Sendak’s leadership. He settled for trading an equally rare gesture on his part: a deep bow, one hand swept across the side of his throat to push his hair aside and show his neck. The bow was standard; the respectful baring of his neck was ancient, a part of the warrior culture that had been lost to newer traditions.

After a long moment, Sendak cleared his throat. “Xir la czest mryn vecha, zxen.” His voice was serious, sonorous. Before Ky could ask what that meant, Sendak left him, sweeping down the ramp onto Resha, where the party had already begun.

 

# # #

 

“I am soooooo drunk!” Brezyn burbled in Ky’s ear. “So so so so soooo drunk, wow.”

By the time Ky had gotten to him, he had been on his fourth bottle of Reshan wine, and now he was on his . . . eighth? Ninth? And here Ky was, lugging him home despite earlier threats. Through one of Resha’s off-limits gardens, no less, which were marked with giant Do Not Touch The Trees signs to ward visitors away from the trees’ aphrodisiac sap. He really ought to follow through his promise one of these days and leave Brezyn on a random planet—make him pay the credits to hop a shuttle back to the  _ Nyr  _ and face Sendak when he was actually angry instead of just amusing himself.

_ Like you have any room to talk about learning lessons. _

“Oh, shut up.”

“Damn, dude, why you gotta be so mean?” Brezyn leaned more heavily on Ky, his feet dragging in Rasha’s sandy soil. Ky stumbled left to keep him from touching a tree. “Can we just sit down for a sec? I need to—ohhhh look look look, it’s CIO Plylox, HEY SIR—”

Ky clapped his free hand over Brezyn’s mouth and threw them both behind a furry (nonaphrodisiac) bush, out of Plytox’s view.

Brezyn licked his palm.

Ky growled at him and hunched lower, dragging him closer in an effort to conceal his gangly legs. Through the night-blue leaves, he could see Plytox still staring in their direction. 

Not for long, though.

A figure emerged from the bushes opposite Ky and Brezyn. Tall, but not built like a Galra, their head concealed by a hood, their fingers blunt and unclawed. Plytox turned toward them. Knew them.

Had been waiting for them.

Ky parted the leaves in front of him to get a better look. 

“Took you long enough.” Plytox stuck a hand out. “Is it here?”

The other person’s voice was raspy and of indistinguishable sex. “Do you have my payment?”

“Be quiet or you’re going to get us killed,” Ky hissed to Brezyn, taking his hand away from Brezyn’s mouth so he could bring up the A/V recorder on his wristlink. 

“It’ll be transferred into your account as soon as I have the transmission. Three thousand credits.”

“We agreed five thousand.”

“We did no such thing,” Plytox snapped. “That recording is worth more to me than your rotting corpse is, so if you won’t hand it over, I’ll take care of you and get it for myself.” He unholstered the blaster from his hip and held it up, its tip glowing a threatening crimson. 

A rattling breath. “We agreed five thousand.”

Ky’s whole body fritzed out with the sound of Plytox’s blaster firing. 

The seller’s body thumped to the ground. Plytox knelt and rummaged through their robe. Ky held his shaking hand up to keep recording. It wasn’t like he was some kind of virgin when it came to death. He’d seen people die. Had killed people himself. But this wasn’t in battle. This wasn’t the cold blast of scattershot fire from one skimmer-ship to the next. This was personal.

Ky’s guts rattled like that dead person’s lungs.  _ No. No, not now, not now. _

No use. His stomach upended. He barely had time to aim away from Brezyn, and no time at all to muffle his retching.

Plytox’s panicked shout echoed around the garden. “Who’s there? I have my weapon drawn!”

They were fucked. They were fucked.

Ky made sure his wristlink was still recording. 

Sendak said, “It’s me.” 

Ky whipped around, but Sendak passed by his and Brezyn’s bush without looking at them.

“Oh. Commander Sendak, sir.” Plytox holstered his blaster. “I have good news, sir. I’ve acquired a transmission from Earth.”

_ Earth? _

“And disposed of its carrier, I see,” Sendak said icily. “What purpose does this transmission serve?”

“It’s an information transmission—a probe.” Plytox scrabbled at his wristlink and slipped the chip into it. “From a human.”

Was there anything left in his stomach to throw up?

Plytox tapped at his wristlink, and a moment later an excited, slightly high-pitched voice spilled out, speaking a language Ky didn’t know. 

“Plytox . . .”

“My apologies, sir, one moment.” Plytox tapped on his wristlink again and restarted the transmission. This time the voice came through in Standard. “Hello! My name is Pidge Holt, and I’m sending this transmission from the planet Earth. I’m sending this probe in an effort to detect the presence of Sam and Matt Holt, as well as Takashi Shirogane. They were on a scientific mission of discovery when they disappeared, and if there are any intelligent beings out there that can help, please, please, I’m leaving this frequency open and will be monitoring it as often as I can. Please, if you can help . . . Please.”

The transmission cut with a burst of static.

“Helpless pleas from a child,” Sendak sneered. “What information are we supposed to extract from them?”

“Not from the child. Emperor Zarkon has gotten nothing from the humans he has in his possession, not in all these months. One of them has become his gladiatorial champion and still will reveal nothing in exchange for freedom.”

“Plytox, I’m growing impatient. What information does this give us?”

“The location,” Plytox said slowly, like Sendak was purposefully missing the point. “The location of Earth is attached to the probe.”

Sendak blinked.

“This  _ child  _ has given us the one thing Zarkon wants nearly as much as the Voltron lions. All we have to do is turn this information over to Zarkon, and he can use the coordinates to threaten these scientists to reveal what they know. And then of course there’s the matter of Earth’s resources . . . Unlike anything else in the universe. It will be like having Altea’s riches at the Empire’s fingertips again.”

Quiet blanketed the garden. Ky tasted bile. Brezyn stared wide-eyed up at him.

Sendak flicked the side of Plytox’s wristlink and took the transmission chip from it. “Your effort has been noted. But if you make another attempt to purchase information without first seeking my permission to do so, I’ll airlock you. Understood?”

“But I—”

“ _ Understood _ ?”

“Yes, sir,” Plytox bit out.

“Good. Go back to the ship. I need to clean up your mess.” Plytox sidestepped him and headed straight for Ky and Brezyn. Sendak’s arm shot out, barring him. “No. Go back through the bar.”

Plytox’s lips thinned, but he went, dodging the trees.

Brezyn grabbed Ky’s arm. “Did he—What do we—”

“Get out here,” Sendak growled. When they emerged, he pointed at Brezyn. “You, back to the  _ Nyr _ . Kyryx, to me.”

“Can you make it back on your own?” Ky asked Brezyn, taken by visions of him running into a tree and spending a miserable week in isolation.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Brezyn’s jaw tightened. “Take care of yourself.” He half ran, half lumbered away. Ky watched till he was clear of the trees.

His wristlink chimed; it was out of temporary recording space and wanted to know if he’d like to store it in his personal database on the  _ Nyr _ .

Ky selected Save To Device instead. Six minutes of recording. 

Six minutes had never seemed so important before.

The chip glowed in Sendak’s hand. 

Ky nodded to it. “If you give that to Emperor Zarkon,” he said, “he’ll destroy the Earth. Won’t he?”

The pattern had been set in place thousands of years before Ky was born. Resources were needed to maintain order in the universe, and the Galra Empire was the body who maintained that order. Therefore resources were to be stripped from planets in times of necessity. That was the pattern: a need, a fulfillment of that need. Sacrifice a few to ensure the Galra Empire would continue to flourish.

And the pattern always ended the same. With a dead planet. 

Its remaining residents were usually shuttled elsewhere, given jobs hunting for more resources. The result was many species scattered over many planets—never all of them on the same home world.

Earth was different. Its location had been lost to time. Ky was the sole being carrying human blood away from it.

Or he had been.

_ Sam and Matt Holt. Takashi Shirogane.  _

Ky knew Zarkon. If those three had vexed him enough, the moment he had the coordinates he would simply strip the Earth and leave its inhabitants there to strangle in the emptiness.

Earth would die, and every other human in the galaxy would die with it.

Ky wasn’t supposed to care about that.

“Won’t he?” Ky repeated.

All he could see was Earth dissolving like a vitamin tab in a glass of water. 

There, then gone, like it had never existed. Like half of Ky came from nothing.

Sendak was silent.

That was answer enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Names:  
> Brezyn (Brez-in)  
> Kyryx (Keer-rix or Kai-rix)  
> Ky (Kai)  
> Nyr (Neer)
> 
> Terms:  
> Reknya (Wreck-knee-ya): A shawl-like covering that wraps around the shoulders and conceals most of the torso. Worn by all civilians and by soldiers when they're off duty.  
> Vrenen (Vren-in): An ancient Galran term for a mentor. It encompasses an attitude of respect and affection, and signifies a deep bond.  
> Zxen (Zix-en): The complement to vrenen; a trainee.


End file.
